A user opinion on using a Galaxy S10 for over a week

Well, it’s an era of new phone design language and hence the curiosity to explore. Welcome to world of extended displays that sport mechanical cameras, notches and now the punch holes. Samsung has done a brilliant job so far avoiding the notches but then again, it had to fall in line and accommodate a full screen display with minimal bezels and thus entered the game of punch hole displays along with Huawei.

The design
Frankly, gone are the days when Samsung used to mimic Apple in terms of design and repeatedly fall prey to lawsuits and design patent infringements. Irrespective of how good the build is, they have an industry leading design for their flagship phones that set a benchmark of it’s own. The Galaxy S10 series is no different. At the very first sight one will fall in love with the design and the all screen front of the phone. The only issue I had is with the flimsy sim card tray that literally wobbles when you push it in, I am sure all it takes is one wrong move to break it apart.

Apart from that, the phone weighs surprisingly less and in an uncomfortable way. I generally prefer a precisely built device that has the heft as well to make it feel premium. Though the S10 has all the looks to feel premium but when you hold it in hand it lacks the heft and weight to complement the design.

THAT screen and that hole
One word – outstanding! Well, to be frank, most people are attracted towards Samsung’s flagship phones for the incredible displays they sport. I mean, how can someone not love these displays! The S10 series start with a 5.8" screen for the S10e and goes up to 6.4" for the S10+ and S10 lies in between at 6.1". To accommodate the edge to edge screen Samsung has gone for a punch hole rather than notch, more on it later.

Coming to the display itself, it’s definitely the best I have used so far and definitely felt more vibrant and punchy than the one I have used on iPhone Xs Max few months ago. The colours just pop out and content literally feels like it’s been printed on top of a glass sheet. It’s been a few years since displays started incorporating the touch digitiser and the LED/LCD panel into a single module thus making the displays thing and content feel more immersive. Samsung being Samsung, it hit the ball out of the park with the amazing display.

That hole! Yes, it sports a punch hole right in the display and this is one of the least obtrusive implementation of notch/punch hole etc. I have seen on the modern day smartphone by far. You barely even notice the punch hole a few hours into using the device and top it up with some cool wallpapers that embrace the punch hole into the design and you will soon forget that there is even a punch hole in the display. Samsung, you have been just brilliant with this implementation!

One UI
Well, if you ask me to pick that one thing that kept me away from Samsung’s devices quite often the I would say it’s definitely TouchWiz – one of the most terrible and sluggish UI or skin I can think of in Android devices (premium alone may be?). But One UI changes it all, it’s super swift, highly sensible, uniform design language and just works. Yes, the icons feels a bit stupid and candy like but the positive sure outweigh it all. Everything, right from app launch speeds to the navigation gestures have been so well refined that the whole interface feels a few generations ahead when compared to Touch Wiz

Wide angle camera
You have all read about how good the cameras on S10 series are and what deficiencies it has. I would like to talk only about the wide angle lens here.

We often see dual camera implementation on various phones, be it for telephoto lens or for variable aperture lens or purely to capture depth information. In fact, we have had phones earlier which had implementation of wide angle lens too but what Samsung has done here is to take the feature main stream and perfect it as well. You will just love how much more scene you can capture with wide angle lens and how different the perspective is. As time goes by I hardly ever use a telephoto lens on dual camera phones but looking at Samsung’s wide angle lens I am pretty sure I will use it a lot going forward.

Samsung Pay
Screw Google Pay (the international implementation for contactless payments), screw Apple Pay and screw every other Pay. The one and only king in such contactless payments in nations like India is Samsung pay. Thanks to their implementation of MST which mimics a magnetic strip, you can use Samsung Pay on any PoS (point of sale or credit card machine (terminal) that accepts normal magnetic strip based cards. So you need not worry about NFC based implementations as you can literally use Samsung Pay on any credit card machine. Samsung just nailed it here. I am sure it’s going to take a few years more for either Google or Apple to start pushing contactless payment systems in India, until then Samsung Pay rocks!

Annoyances
No device is perfect and so is the Galaxy S10, partly due to Samsung and party due to Android. Truth be told, irrespective of how many Android devices I have been using right since the very first HTC G1 I got in 2008, my heart always goes with iOS in the end but what keeps pulling me back to Android devices is the experimentation, innovation and the crazy attractive hardware that Android OEMs produce.

Annoyance – heat!
With the S10, the first issue I have is with device heating up beyond convenience at times even for minor intensive apps running for a few minutes. I mean, it’s been so many years since we have been getting Android devices with powerful processors but who doesn’t they accommodate proper thermal throttling to ensure low heat even when intensive apps are used. The phone gets so hot at times that I literally lock the screen and keep it aside for a while as it gets very inconvenient. Have faced such similar issues with many Android devices in the past.

Annoyance – Battery life
Battery life on S10 isn’t that great. I have had the iPhone X before switching over to the S10 and frankly I used my iPhone X more on a daily basis than I am using my S10 now and the S10 is barely able to match up to the kind of battery life iPhone X used to produce. I never believe in battery life tests, they do not represent a real world usage. Simply reasons such as iPhone being highly efficient with idle time battery usage etc matter a lot. I plug out my S10 at around 2 AM to 3 AM each day in between sleep and by the time I wake up the battery is discharged by around 8% every day because of idle usage (background apps and processes) whereas my iPhone almost always used to manage to stay at 100% or 99% each day. All such minor things add up a lot by the end of day when you use the phone.

But on the flip side, I heard S10+ has a superb battery life. I didn’t want to spend much and am generally comfortable with a smaller device and hence I opted for S10 instead of S10+.

Annoyance – accidental touches
Dear Samsung, when you have such a beautiful class leading display it also needs an implementation equally good to neglect accidental touches. Almost every time I use the phone I am annoyed at least once about an accidental touch that happens. They really need a better implementation to neglect accidental touches. Yes, they have an option in settings which makes it a bit better but it hardly is perfect. I have seen Apple to have a wonderful implementation on iPads to neglect accidental touches while using Apple Pencil.

Annoyance – those minor issues with camera
The S10 has a great camera but a typical Samsung’s camera. Overblown backgrounds, over smoothened faces and a bit saturated colours. Sigh! I can love with the saturated colours, though they are not realistic it still is pleasing to the eye but the way Samsung phones handles faces in pics is sheer annoyance! The selfie camera especially is comical when it comes to how it handles the faces. Normal mode seems like beauty mode and beauty mode makes the faces feel like plastic doll face.

Some minor features I love to have in Android
Wallet – Apple Wallet is a feature I use quite often. Most reservations based apps, right from movies to flights to hotels and what not have implemented Apple Wallet compatibility. This is one feature I love in iOS and use a lot! One can basically add their reservation into apple wallet in the form of a card. Depending on location and time if you have a reservation matching up it will show on lock screen directly. Example, you have a flight at 08:00 PM and you added that reservation card in Apple Wallet, if you are in that city, Apple Wallet will automatically pop it up on lock screen for easy usage. Apart from the convenience it’s a great tool to pool up all reservations in one place.

Automatic creations in Photos app – Google Photos also does it but the videos are not even close to what iOS does. Google seriously needs to bump up their game at it. Might not be a feature most people even bother about but it matters to me a lot as I use it a lot. After a vacation or an occasion in which I click lots of pics and videos, iOS automatically creates a video of it which is so well done that it almost feels like it’s done by a professional. I hardly need to edit or change anything in it.

Sample video of a trip: created by iOS on iPhone 7 Plus I had back then

I hardly spent around 30 minutes on this as it was already pre-made. The only reason I spent 30 minutes is to add those route snippets on map else it would hardly take 5 minutes to delete any unwanted videos/photos or add more from the video it makes by default.

Better implementation of live photos – Samsung tried and is decent to begin with but it has a long way to go before it feels as good as it does on iOS.